CI/CD Pipelines

This guide explains how to design and operate CI/CD pipelines that are fast, reliable, and auditable.

Pipeline objectives

A production-ready pipeline should:

• validate code quality before merge,
• produce reproducible artifacts,
• deploy safely across environments,
• and provide clear rollback paths.

Reference pipeline stages

1. Source: trigger on pull requests and main branch updates.
2. Build: compile and package with locked dependencies.
3. Test: run unit, integration, and security checks.
4. Release: publish immutable artifacts with version metadata.
5. Deploy: progressive rollout with environment gates.
6. Verify: post-deploy health checks and alert validation.

Delivery controls

• Enforce branch protection and required checks.
• Separate deployment permissions from code merge permissions.
• Use environment-specific secrets and short-lived credentials.
• Keep rollback artifacts available for every release.

Deployment strategies

• Blue/green: fast rollback with duplicate environments.
• Canary: low-risk rollout to a subset of traffic.
• Rolling update: gradual replacement with health checks.

Failure handling

When a pipeline fails:

1. stop downstream stages immediately,
2. collect logs and test artifacts,
3. classify root cause (code, config, infra, dependency),
4. rerun only after corrective change is merged.

Tooling options

• CI engines: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI
• Artifact stores: GitHub Packages, Artifactory, ECR/GCR/ACR
• Quality gates: lint, unit tests, SAST, dependency scanning

Next steps

• Docker & Kubernetes Documentation
• Infrastructure as Code Documentation
• Cloud Platforms